A common indoor problem is undesired insects, such as Asian lady bugs, houseflies, flies, fruit flies, gnats, stink bugs, and the like. Undesired insects may cause contamination of food, allergic reactions in humans, and general annoyance. Many procedures and devices have been produced to capture or remove such undesired insects from within households, store, restaurants, and other indoor areas. However, insects that are caught in such traps (e.g. adhesives that are hung from ceilings to capture a passing insect) are in full view, which may be undesirable.
It is known in the art that many insects, including domestic pests such as house flies, are attracted to light sources. In the case of house flies, the insects often end up congregating at the strongest light source, i.e. exterior-facing windows. Prior inventions have attempted to capitalize on this fact, such as adhesive devices that are placed on windows. However, insects caught on such adhesives are in full view, which may be aesthetically unpleasant and undesirable. Some insects traps have been designed to have a box or decorative element that surrounds the insect trapping means to keep captured insects out of view, but this box or decorative element also decreases the amount of light surrounding the insect trapping means, potentially decreasing the attraction of the insect towards the insect trapping area and decreasing the effectiveness of the trap. Some other insect traps have been designed to include a light source which attracts insects towards an insect trap, but this increases the size, cost, and complexity of the insect trap.
The prior art teaches the use of at least two orthogonally-rotated polarizing filters to control the passage of light through both windows and thus obscure the view of objects located behind both filters. There is no prior art that teaches using polarized light to capture houseflies. It was discovered by the inventor that an object, such as the body of a housefly, which is located between two parallel, orthogonally-rotated, plane-polarizing light filters is substantially obscured from external view, a novel effect not taught or suggested by the prior art. Further experimentation demonstrated that a trap which is substantially transparent from an insect's plane-on point of view but which is opaque to a human's face-on point of view is superior to a trap which is opaque to both human and insect, which was an unexpected benefit from the method.
It is now apparent that the prior art lacks an insect trap that effectively utilizes ambient light to attract insects while substantially hiding captured insects from public view. This invention provides such an insect trap.